Manilla Road’s newest album Voyager is a continuation of their style on Gates of Fire. It’s an epic album that has story to it, which is about a Viking who comes back to his home city, and the king is now a Christian and goes on a voyage rather than converting. The story isn’t all that deep, but the music to it fits perfectly.

The song writing on this album is superb, just like all other Manilla Road albums. The songs in this album change from aggressive epic riffs to acoustic country riffs. Mark does and unbelievable job on the vocals; there are no vocals like on Mystification; however, he uses growls nicely, and uses his deep aged voice to perfection. In the song ‘Eye of the Storm’, which has a nice country vibe to it, Mark uses his deep voice to add a soothing warm, sad tone to it. This album just flows so nicely from start to finish, and every riff is thought out perfectly and placed in a way that makes the songs epic and beautiful. The length to this album, which is 64 minutes, goes by quite quickly because everything flows smoothly and the riffs are always good.

The album is great continuation to the legacy of Manilla Road and does not disappoint.

Manilla Road is awesome and "Voyager" is a fine album, though I don't put it my MR top 3, which is "Mystification", "Crystal Logic" and "The Deluge". A bit more acoustic than I'm used to on Manilla stuff.

I just had a long talk with Mark Shelton a couple months ago and a nicer guy you could never hope to talk to. Guys like him are what make this business go, not the latest flash in the pan trend-hopper who is hot for three or four years before fading into nothingness.